This invention relates generally to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) systems, and more particularly to methods for compensating for eddy currents existing in MRI systems.
Eddy currents are electric currents generated in a conducting structure by rapidly changing magnetic fields. In modern MRI systems, a fast switching gradient subsystem and a conducting (typically metallic) structure of the MRI scanner couple together and generate substantial eddy currents that can lead to image artifacts or distortion. At least one known superconducting MRI system is equipped with a pre-emphasis system that compensates for the eddy current effect. However, image distortion resulting from overcompensation and undercompensation can still occur. At least one known method for eddy current measurement based on the Free Induction Decay (FID) techniques is known not to be very sensitive to currents with short time constants on the order of 1 to 4 ms.
Recent reports suggest that flow-quantization using Phase Contrast (PC) imaging has worse performance on contemporary scanners than on previous generation scanners that have slower gradients. This phenomenon has been noted on scanners made by a number of different manufacturers.
Phase contrast imaging uses a bipolar gradient to encode flowing spin. For each set of k-space data, there are usually two acquisitions. In a first acquisition, a flow sensitizing bipolar gradient is turned on. In a second acquisition, the bipolar gradient is either turned off or reversed in polarity. The phase difference image reconstructed from these two sets of data is used to represent the flow. It is known that the flow velocity is proportional to the phase difference:
  v  =                    v        enc            ⁢      Δφ        π  
in which venc is the velocity which will lead to phase shift of π.
However, if there is uncompensated eddy current, there will be different amount of extra phase accumulation during the two acquisitions. Thus, a spurious extra phase difference is displayed in the phase difference image because the eddy current effects are different in these two acquisitions. As a result of the spurious phase difference, there is also an error in flow or velocity measurement. These effects can lead to an overall phase shift in an entire object or a phase ramp throughout an object. The overall phase shift or phase ramp are caused by B0 eddy currents (DC) and linear eddy currents, respectively. On a scanner with a high slew-rate gradient system used in applications such as the quantification of aortic flow, the amount of error can be on the order of the quantity being measured.